


Phoenix

by Townycod13



Series: November 7th [2]
Category: South Park
Genre: Character Study, Short, dealing with loss and gain, ignore me, kenny thinks too much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 18:43:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13665012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Townycod13/pseuds/Townycod13
Summary: Kenny has trouble coming to terms with the course his life has taken.





	Phoenix

Fire.

Burns away everything.

Takes and takes and takes and in a strange way, it gives.

Kenny could understand the mythos of a phoenix. Other than his sympathies to the poor creature for burning and dying eternally, he could understand why such a myth existed. Sometimes fire was a blessing in disguise.

Sometimes something new really could be born from the ashes and rise to new heights.

That didn’t make it easier to swallow though.

It was an explosion in the meth lab out back, caught the entire house on fire. They lost everything except lives.

They were lucky that way.

No one died and all that was lost was material.

He knew, logically, that all his possessions amounted to was a pile of junk kindling, but to him they had been valuable. He’d always had a bad habit of applying too much value to objects.

It hurt to watch it all burn away. Memories, good and the bad, and the only home he’d ever known.

Things worked out somehow and through some legal loophole that Kyle’s dad had pulled from the deepest crevices of his anal cavity, now they had a better house that the city had to pay for.

Something to do with the old SoDoSoPa structures causing the fire to spread faster and farther than it would have otherwise.

Things shifted, ever so slightly, after the fire and improve in strange ways. Maybe his mom works more and maybe they all try to keep the new nice house nice.

And in some ways the terror of losing each other in a blaze of smoke drives them together.

It’s still not perfect and shit still hits the fan but Kenny can recognize that this would be why people thought phoenix’s rose from the ashes.

The rebuilding of worlds and relationships that can occur after an incident of that degree was impressive.

Kenny wished he could be happier about it. He really did.

It was a good thing. Everything was better. Hell, people _treated_ him better.

Instead he felt uncomfortable in his own skin.

It was like he was leading a stranger’s life.

Nice house, relatively nice parents, happy siblings, and friends that didn’t look down on him quite so much.

It was cause to celebrate.

Why couldn’t he just celebrate like the others?

Maybe he sympathized too strongly with the phoenix.

He knew what it felt like to burn to death and even if he came back better than new, it still _hurt_.

It hurt a lot.

Which drove home the question that haunted him, who was it that felt the burn if the fire?

Nothing so convenient as a new life came without costs. Kenny paid those high interest rates constantly.

He lived a stranger’s life in a stranger’s home with a stranger’s friends.

Without knowing what or who had paid the price he didn’t think he could ever grow comfortable with it.


End file.
